Dimensions in Time - Target Novelization!
by coinilius
Summary: A Target style novelization of the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time.
1. Prelude

The hollow eyes of the Cyberman stared inscrutably outwards, its head mounted inside a rounded alcove in the wall like a tribal death-mask in some twisted collection. Cyrian shivered slightly as he pushed the roundel cover back into place, obscuring the metal monster from view. He had encountered the Cybermen before, when he had been stranded on the planet DV Acrol 8. They would have killed him, or worse; they could have converted him into one of them, replacing his flesh and blood with steel and circuitry, replacing his humanity with the cold, calculating machine logic that drove their race. But he had been rescued, and he had the Rani to thank for that.

The Rani was a Time Lord and a scientist, and while she was not altruistic by nature, she had seen in him a potential usefulness. Currently he was acting as her assistant, helping her to catalogue her incredible collection of specimens. Moving on to the next open roundel, he was confronted by a humanoid man dressed in a skull cap and a large, winged collar that framed his expressionless face. A Time Lord from Gallifrey, a fellow member of the Rani's own race, pinned like a butterfly to a board.

The specimens had been gathered from across the entire universe, so he had been lead to believe, a menagerie of every sentient creature in existence. Or at least, almost every sentient creature in existence, for there was still one more that needed to be collected, one that the Rani had deliberately left for last.

An Earthling.

'The Menagerie is almost complete,' Cyrian said, replacing the cover on the trapped Time Lord and turning to face his benefactor.

'Time is literally of the essence,' The Rani replied, striding towards the large hexagonal console that dominated the centre of the room. Moving from panel to panel, she began flipping switches and making adjustments. 'The Doctor is teetering on the edge of a precipice.'

This was why she had left the Earthling for last. Cyrian's understanding was that the Doctor was another Time Lord with whom the Rani had an intense rivalry. He had stood in her way before, defeated her and ruined her experiments. But for some reason, he had a soft-spot for the human race. This Time-Trap she had set was for him, using Earthlings as bait. Using the power of her TARDIS - the machine with which she travelled through time and space - she had punched a hole through reality itself, creating a massive Time-Tunnel.

But all this energy and effort she was expending just to eliminate the Doctor, when she could have just stolen an Earthling like she had all her other specimens without raising any alarm, left Cyrian with an uncomfortable feeling. Even now her TARDIS, in the form of a bulbous, rust coloured space station, was orbiting the chaotic maw of the tunnel, like a spider circling a drain, waiting for the Doctor to spring her trap.

'You're obsessed,' Cyrian said, his voice ringed with concern. 'Don't forget what we came here for.'

The Rani looked up from the control panel she was manipulating, her face dark. 'Earthlings pose no threat to my technology, imbecile,' she vehemently spat. 'It's the Doctor I want out of the way!' Turning her back on Cyrian and the console, she pressed a button hidden on the control bracelet she wore on her left wrist. On the facing wall a panel slid open, revealing a monitor screen. On the screen resolved the image of a blue box-like shape spinning through space. In fact, it was a Police Telephone Box of the kind that had been used in London in the 1960's. It was also the rather unassuming form of her enemy the Doctor's TARDIS. Knowing his place, Cyrian glanced down at a read-out on the console in front of him.

'Interception in 5 seconds, Rani.'

The Rani looked back at him, a contemplative look on her face. 'Although I will miss the challenge,' she said with a note of what could almost be called disappointment in her voice. On the view screen, the TARDIS was getting closer and closer as Cyrian counted down from the five second mark. When he reached one, the Rani almost shrieked at him to activate the surprise they had prepared for her enemy. Obediently, Cyrian pushed the necessary button and a bolt of blue light lanced out towards the Doctor's TARDIS. There was a flash and then the Police Box shape disappeared, leaving nothing but stars...


	2. Chapter One: The Gordian Knot

The only way to describe the morning so far was 'bleak'. The sky was the sort of featureless grey that seemed to permeate downwards, infecting everything beneath it with an equally featureless melancholy. If it had been a little lighter, the day could have perhaps been almost pleasant, or at least bearable; a little darker and there would have been at least the threat of rain and the feeling of something, even if it was just annoyance at having your day ruined by a turn in the weather. But instead it was simply grey, and bleak.

It probably didn't help that the wharf was deserted; whatever extra energy that a bustle of people going about their everyday business might have brought to it being completely absent. There was absolutely nothing of interest about this particular day and this particular location. Which is why, if there had been any one around to witness it, the sudden stirrings of a deep wheezing and groaning sound that seemed to come from nowhere and the subsequent fading in to existence of an antiquated Police Telephone Box would have been quite the shocker.

'Oh, to be in China now that November's here.'

The shocks just kept coming as next, from out of the box came a small and somewhat rumpled man in a scarf and Panama hat, speaking in a Scottish accent as he practically skipped out of what should have been the extremely tight interior of the Police Box. Following along behind him was a young girl dressed in a leather jacket adorned with badges and pins. The former was the Doctor, currently in his Seventh incarnation, and the latter his travelling companion, known affectionately by the nickname of Ace (and much less affectionately by her real name of Dorothy).

'When was the last time you had that junk heap in for an MOT, Professor?' she asked, looking around her at the distinctly non-Chinese landscape. Behind them rested a familiar looking clipper ship in dry-dock.

'Oh don't be cynical, Ace, the instruments are just a little erratic, that's all,' the Doctor replied, waving his hands about in what was presumably meant as a dismissive gesture. Ace was not to be put off however and pointed out the ship they were walking past just in case he hadn't noticed it yet. 'Great wall of China? Looks more like the Cutty Sark to me!'

The Doctor looked around, the reality of their surroundings finally sinking in. 'Mmm... And not a soul in sight,' he added. His curiosity piqued, he spied a newspaper that had fortuitously been abandoned in a nearby rubbish bin. Giving the paper a bit of a flick to remove the remaining detritus of someone's recent meal of fish and chips, he quickly scanned the front page for the date. '1973? I didn't set the co-ordinates for 1973.'

Ace rolled her eyes. It seemed to her like he never managed to get the co-ordinates right. Still, there was something strange about this place; it was way too quiet for a start. The Cutty Sark was a popular attraction, and this close to the centre of Greenwich there should at least be some people about. 'Oi, is anybody there?' she called out, walking further along the length of the dry-docked clipper. Dropping the paper back into the bin, the Doctor followed along behind her, turning the situation over in his mind.

'If I didn't know better, I could be convinced that someone had deliberately taken us off course... Ace, what are you doing?' While the Doctor was thinking out loud, Ace had stopped to examine a nearby street sign. CUTTY SARK GARDENS – SE10. At least they knew where and when they were...

(Suddenly...)

(Time jumped like a needle skipping in the groove of a forgotten record...)

Ace blinked. The sign now read ALBERT SQUARE. Startled, she looked up at the Doctor for explanation, only to get an even bigger surprise when she realised that the Doctor she knew was gone and in his place stood a taller man with a shock of curly blonde hair and a far more shocking frock coat; it seemed to have been pieced together from a thousand different pieces of fabric, each more garishly coloured than the last.

'Here, you're not the Doctor,' Ace said, eyeing the stranger suspiciously.

'Yes I am, Ace,' the man replied. In actuality, he was the Doctor as he appeared in his sixth incarnation. Loud and domineering, he had a tendency to sweep people up in the wake of his personality, much like a Tsunami or some other natural disaster. 'We seem to have slipped a groove in time. Where did all these people come from?'

So engrossed in this strange new version of the Doctor's choice in attire, Ace hadn't even noticed that they were now suddenly surrounded by throngs of people going about their ordinary, everyday business. In fact, as the sign had indicated not only had the Doctor changed appearance but they had changed location as well. The Albert Square Markets were in full swing. 

* * *

While the Sixth Doctor examined a piece of fruit at a nearby stall, Ace's attention was caught by a rack of jackets. Maybe there would be something she could get for the Doctor to wear...

'Hey Professor, look at this!' she said, pulling out a mustard coloured overcoat. Spying a potential sale, and an attractive enough looking young girl, the stall owner sauntered over, placing an arm nonchalantly over the clothes rack.

'All right darling, special discount for you seeing as it's nearly Christmas,' he said, giving Ace a smile. 'Wicked,' Ace replied as she pulled off her own jacket and slipped into the new one. Having overheard this exchange, the stall owner's wife needled him in the ribs.

'What do you mean, discount?' She whispered, 'The years been bad enough as it is without you giving things away, Sanjay!' Sanjay laughed and placed what was supposed to be a reassuring hand on his wife Gita's shoulder. 'Don't worry about it, alright?' Gita wasn't so easily placated, but a sale was a sale and she quickly buried her worries beneath her best sales woman smile.

'Hey, do you like that love?' she asked, turning to the two potential customers in front of her. Even if the girl wasn't interested, the man certainly looked like he could be talked into buying anything...

The Doctor placed an arm up against Ace's new coat. 'It clashes!' he said, prompting Ace to make a face. If it didn't clash she would have been worried. 'They're going to be the rage next year in 1994!' Gita continued, still hoping to convince them. But the Doctor wasn't convinced... in fact, he was more concerned than ever as what she said sunk in. If next year was 1994, then this year was now 1993, but that would mean that they had jumped in time as well as space. He turned to the female stall owner, opened his mouth to ask her to repeat what she had said...

(His question went unasked and unanswered, however, as time jumped again)

'What happened?'

It was someone else asking the questions now. Another of the Doctor's companions stood where Ace should have been; the red-haired young woman Melanie Bush. The Doctor had changed as well. Gone was the brash and colourful Sixth Doctor, in his place was the hawklike and patriarchal Third Doctor.

'Change,' he announced, seemingly unfazed by the sudden shift in his character and that of his companion. 'You, me, everything. It's as though someone were rooting through my personal time stream.' Although they were still in Albert Square, something had changed in where they were as well. Now that he knew what to expect, the Doctor could tell that they had shifted in time again from their last jump.

'But what on Earth for?' Mel asked. When she had been the Doctor's companion, she had travelled with him in his Sixth and Seventh incarnations. Although she had never met this version of the Doctor, she could tell instantly who he was, as if there were other sets of memories waiting for her to access. And hadn't she been someone else just before? Without a Time Lord brain, these time-skips were going to be hard for her to wrap her head around.

'Earth. Yes.' The Doctor considered this. Why was this happening here, in this dreary backwater of London's East End? What malevolent force held Earth in its grip this time, and for what purpose? Looking about himself, the Doctor spied an elderly woman attending to a nearby fruit stall. Could it have been the same fruit stall he had been contemplating in the previous time-jump? He supposed so – in a place like this, the more things changed more often than not the more they stayed the same.

'Excuse me, my good woman, but what year is this?' he asked, his manner all gentlemanly charm. It wasn't much use, however, as at that exact moment a teenage boy pushed past him, disappearing quickly into the crowd of people. 'Oi, you come back!' Pauline Fowler, the owner of the stall, called after him shrilly. ''Ere, he's just nicked an orange!'

'Shouldn't your Martin be looking after the stall?' Pauline's friend Kathy, who had been standing by gossiping, asked. Pauline wasn't a young woman, and with the way things were these days, it wasn't right that she should be left to mind the fruit and veg stall by herself, not when she had a perfectly capable son to pitch in and help.

''E's never 'ere when you want him,' Pauline sighed. 'I wish my Arthur was still alive.' Kathy shook her head in sympathy. The Doctor meanwhile, uninterested in hearing about the daily lives of these two elderly women, had started rifling through the various fruits and vegetables on display. Finally noticing the strange looking figure man-handling her wares, Pauline turned her attention on to him. 'And just what do you think you're doing? Stop messing the goods about,' she complained. 'Do you want to buy something or not?'

The Doctor held up a pear, turning it over in his hands cautiously as if it were an unexploded grenade rather than a piece of fruit. 'Well considering the quality of everything you have, madam, I would say that your prices are rather expensive,' he sniffed disdainfully. Pauline gave him a fierce look and was about to follow it up with a royal scolding but never got the chance as his attention was once again diverted by Mel calling him over to this time periods version of the clothes stall.

'I see flares are back in fashion,' Mel said, looking over a pair of lime green and black striped pants. Truth be told, she actually quite liked the look of them. Spying a potential sale, Kathy sauntered over from her gossip spot at Pauline's stall. 'Oh yeah,' she said, 'everything from the last century seems to be making a comeback. I just wish my looks were.'

'Last century?' The Doctor asked, wheeling around sharply to face Kathy and Mel.

'What year is this?' Mel asked, images of hoop-skirts and whale-ivory corsets making a comeback flashing ridiculously through her head.

'Oh don't you start,' Pauline replied, glaring at the pair of strangers. 'There's enough oddballs around here as it is.'

The Doctor's patience was rapidly coming to an end. 'Madam,' he forcefully repeated his question, 'what year is this?'

Pauline and Kathy looked at each other in bewilderment. Could it be that these two really didn't know what year it was? There was something in the man's voice, something both imperious and desperate at the same time which made them think these two weren't just trying to wind them up. They might be balmy but they seemed genuinely serious. Pauline and Kathy answered at the same time.

'2013!' 


	3. Chapter Two: The Widening Gyre

**1973**

As if on cue reality lurched drunkenly to the side, resetting the Doctor and his companions once again. Pauline and Kathy were still standing where they had been before, but their entire appearance had changed. They were decades younger and dressed, ironically enough, in the same style of clothes that Kathy would be trying to sell at her stall in the year 2013. Next to Kathy a young boy in a multi-coloured beanie was amusing himself by playing with the fruit on the stall.

'Yeah, I can remember exactly where I was when Kennedy was assassinated,' Pauline said, then quickly added with a cheeky grin 'but don't tell Arthur!'

Kathy laughed; knowing what Pauline was like she could well imagine what she might have been up to. 'How long ago was that then?'

'Well, it'll be about ten years!'

'No!' She found it hard to believe that the Kennedy Assassination had been so long ago; time, like a mischievous child, had a tendency to disappear when you weren't watching, Kathy mused. Or in the case of her particular mischievous child, had a tendency to play about with whatever came to hand. With an exasperated cry of 'Ian, will you behave!' she grabbed a well-worn apple from her son's hand.

Oblivious to this exchange, the Sixth Doctor found himself walking along the street a little further away, in front of an old pub called the Queen Victoria, with his arm around the shoulder of his granddaughter Susan.

'Who are you?' Susan asked, looking up at the strange man beside her in confusion.

'Precisely,' the Doctor replied, seizing on the opportunity for a bit of word play. 'I am the Doctor!' For some reason he never got tired of that one.

'Oh no you're not,' Susan laughed. 'You're nothing like my grandfather!'

The Doctor looked down at for a moment sadly; she was still the innocent girl that had traveled with him and the two school teachers so many years ago, the last connection that he had to his family, long lost to the mists of time and memory. 'I feel as though I'm being pulled backwards through time, and my companions are being drawn back with me.'

This was all getting to be too much for Susan. 'Ian, Barbara,' she called out. If only she could find her friends, then she was sure that she would be able to find her real grandfather as well. He would be able to sort this mess out. 'Where are the others?' she asked, a hint of fear creeping into her voice. The strange, other Doctor pulled her closer to him.

'Don't ask,' he replied. 'Someone is trying to separate me from the TARDIS, and knows my affinity for this planet.'

'Where's grandfather?' Susan asked; the hint of fear in her voice had given way to full panic now as she looked around her desperately. 'My Doctor! The original!'

The Sixth Doctor leaned down close to her. 'The in-rush of Time Zones is designed to seal us all together...'

('Pickled in time like gherkins in a jar!')

(Inside her TARDIS the Rani watched with satisfaction as two disembodied heads drifted through the air above her. The first head was that of a stern, elderly man, while the second was most obviously characterised by an unruly mop of dark hair. They were the heads of the First and Second incarnations of the Doctor.)

('Mistress Rani, the Time-Tunnel is ready to receive its first guests,' Cyrian informed her. The Rani nodded in acknowledgment. 'Proceed.')

(Her plan was working perfectly. Using the power of the Time-Tunnel she had already managed to carve off two of the Doctors past-lives, further weakening her enemy as he ran confused and disorientated like a rat through the maze of time she had transformed London's East End into. Now she would cast them into the tunnel itself where they would be lost from time altogether. It was the most wonderfully torturous fate for a being such as the Doctor, whose very existence was defined by wanderlust.)

('Fated to wander a dismal corner of the universe for twenty years; helpless, paralysed. It'll drive them insane!' The Rani laughed maniacally as the two heads were flung from the ship like discarded rubbish, swallowed by the hungry maw of the Time-Tunnel.)

 **2013**

'Well, my skin has been great since I started wearing all over sun-block, I think it's right that it's the law,' Sharon Mitchell explained as she stalked across Albert Square. Sarah Jane Smith, another former companion of the Doctor's, followed along behind her. Although she had no idea how she had gotten here, or even 'when' here was, her journalists instincts had kicked in automatically and she hit the ground running, asking questions and trying to get to the bottom of things as best she could.

'Law?' she asked, looking up just as a sleek silver monorail train shot silently by along the skyline behind them. There wasn't one of them in Albert Square last time she went. 'Since when?'

Sharon was about to respond when Sarah Jane spotted a very familiar looking figure in a cape and velvet suit walking amongst the crowd across the square. There was only one man that she knew who could pull off a look like that, and even then only some of the time. It all depended on what face he was wearing, really. As she dashed off to catch him, Sharon called out after her. 'Where've you been hiding then?' But she never got an answer.

'Hi,' Sarah Jane said, falling into step behind the Third Doctor. 'I thought you'd be involved somewhere along the line.'

The Doctor continued his line of reasoning from where he had been forced to leave off while talking to Susan by the last time jump. All this switching of time tracks was making it hard for even him to think straight, keeping him constantly off his guard and on the back foot. It had to be a deliberate strategy, he was sure of it. 'What we're seeing here, Sarah is the work of a genius. An expert in time distortion. A time traveler, maybe, and an ingenious operator.'

Sarah Jane looked at him in concern. 'Well then, we must get back to the TARDIS Doctor.'

'It's on the other side of the river, I think,' he replied almost absently. There was still so much to this situation that he didn't understand; the pieces were there, but they were jumbled, missing some vital clue that would help bring it all together. 'You know, we seem to be flitting around in some sort of 20 year time loop; 1973...'

As the Doctor spoke, something clicked in Sarah Jane's mind and fragments of memories she shouldn't have begun to surface. '...1993, 2013,' she concluded.

'Yes well, time distortion of this nature requires an exact localised focus.'

'Well, why this street market in London?' Sarah Jane asked. From what she could tell, Albert Square in 2013 was no different to Albert Square in any of the other time periods they had visited. The people around them were perfectly normal, or at least as normal as East Enders ever got.

The Doctor stopped in mid-stride as realisation struck him. Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. 'This isn't the focus, Sarah.'

('Blundering fools!')

(Inside her TARDIS, the Rani was furious. The Doctor was beginning to see through the time loop trap she had set for him, getting too near to the truth. She would have to make things a little more difficult for him.)

('Release the specimens!')

 **1993**

A burst of energy slashed through the air, exploding at the feet of the Fifth Doctor and his companions Peri and Nyssa. The three time travellers shrank back against an arched recession in a nearby wall, trying to make use of what little cover it provided as they took stock of the situation.

Across the street a Cyberman began marching purposely towards them, bringing its deadly cyber-weapon back up to bear on them. And it wasn't alone; falling into step behind it was an Ogron. Not a very common combination.

'Feeding time at the Zoo?' Nyssa asked.

'And the companions went in two by two,' the Doctor replied enigmatically.

'This isn't Noah's Ark, Doctor,' Peri snapped back.

'Maybe it is,' the Doctor said, equally enigmatically. There was something unusual about this scene, more so than just the sudden appearance of two alien creatures in the middle of Albert Square. Where was the panic? The market place was full of people, they hadn't disappeared again, he could still see them milling about the stalls. And yet they hadn't reacted in the slightest to the sudden appearance of a gun toting Cyberman in their midst... He had to cut short this line of thinking, however, as it was increasingly obvious that the two alien monsters were still advancing menacingly towards them.

'When I say 'run', run,' the Doctor whispered, followed a second later by a panicked shout of 'RUN!' Making a break for it, the three dashed towards a nearby alley and the extra cover it provided, only to discover a fully armoured Vanir guard waiting for them its arms outstretched. 'This way,' the Doctor called out, wheeling around to avoid the Vanir.

'No!' Peri instead ran into the centre of the Albert Square markets. All around them, creatures from the Doctor's past were spilling into the street. The people needed to be warned otherwise they would be caught in the crossfire. Grabbing the first person she came across, Peri yelled desperately at her. 'Look, you've got to clear the streets, you're in terrible danger!'

The accosted woman, Pat Butcher, looked at Peri as if she were an escaped lunatic asylum patient. 'What's your game?' she asked suspiciously, tightening her grip on her purse just in case the shrieking American girl made a grab for it.

'You've got to get away from here!' Two more strangers rushed up beside here, the same hysterical look about them. In fact, the man even appeared to be wearing Cricket whites! That clinched it for Pat; they were clearly all from the nut house, or at least destined for it!

''Ere, who says?' Pat snapped at them. She wasn't going to be scared by a couple of skinny girls and their Nancy mate, no matter how crazy they might be. 'If you start shoving me about, you'll soon know about it!'

The Doctor simply shook his head as the woman stormed off. Her reaction to their situation had confirmed his earlier suspicions. 'It's no good,' he explained. 'They're in different time zones. To them, we're the strangers.'


	4. Chapter Three: The Killing Jar

Albert Square was alive with monsters.

Creatures from across the universe swarmed amongst the stalls, lurching through the throngs of people who filled the market, completely oblivious to the nightmare scene around them. As the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa ran for their lives, alien beings leered and gibbered intensely down at them from the windows of the Queen Vic; a Tractator, a Tetrap, an Alderberian, a Biomechanoid!

'Have you any idea where we're going?' Peri called out to the Doctor. From the clothes stand beside her exploded a Stigorax in a blur of hair and teeth, snapping at her heels as she raced after the Doctor and Nyssa.

'Doctor, where's the TARDIS?' Nyssa asked. Their only chance was to reach the relative safety of the Doctor's time machine; at least there they might have time to think and work out a plan of attack, instead of constantly being on the back foot.

'Twenty years back and three miles away,' the Doctor replied, herding the two girls into the Albert Square Gardens. 'Come on!' At the other end of the gardens there escape was cut short however, as the exit they had been hoping to use was chained and locked. Peri shook the gate ineffectually while the Doctor fumbled with the lock. If only he still had his sonic screwdriver, or even just a regular screwdriver! To get this far, only to be brought up short by something as simple as padlock...

Back the way they had fled from, the strange collection of aliens was gathering at the gates of the Albert Square Gardens, blocking off any chance of retreat. They were trapped, herded like animals to the slaughter. And yet, the army of monsters did not advance any further. Instead they hung back; those that had them kept their weapons at the ready but did not use them. Despite their ranks being made up almost exclusively of creatures the Doctor had often called enemies in the past they hesitated at the moment when they had him at his most vulnerable.

'You can't escape, Doctor,' called out a familiar voice. Suddenly the reason for the monsters hesitation became clear. They were being controlled by another face from his past, another foe that would stop at nothing to see him dead. The Rani strode out from the doorway of the Queen Vic wielding a deadly looking futuristic gun and an equally deadly look of smug triumph. 'Say 'goodbye', Doctors, you're all going on a long journey. A very long journey.'

The Doctor was less than impressed. 'I take back what I said about an ingenious operator being behind these time jumps.'

'What's going on, Doctor?' Peri asked. She had met the Rani before, back in the 19th Century. But then the Rani had been more interested in science and experimentation than in the sort of bizarre revenge scheme she seemed to be operating this time.

'Who else could master such a difficult operation?' the Rani asked rhetorically as she crossed from the Queen Vic to the Albert Square Gardens. Keeping her gun trained on the Doctor and his companions, she dismissed her alien specimens with a wave of her hand. 'Back to my TARDIS,' she ordered them. Obediently the monsters turned as one and started filing into the Queen Vic; in the confusion of the chase she had materialised her TARDIS around the entire building, taking its shape so as to better serve as a staging ground for her attack on the Doctor.

But the Rani had played her hand too early. In her over confidence she had assumed that the Time-Trap would have been enough to weaken the Doctor; while he was vulnerable she should have pressed her advantage while she had the chance. Placing his hands to his temples, the Doctor began to concentrate and summon his strength. The Rani had sort to confuse and ultimately disarm him by breaking down the walls of time, forcing his past and future selves to come crashing together, but in her arrogance she had also given him the means to fight back.

A house divided cannot stand, but a Doctor united...

'Why bother trying to summon up your remaining selves?' The Rani sneered, sensing what the Doctor was trying to do. 'I've weakened you!' So convinced was she of her enemies' demise, she turned her back on him, preparing to return to her TARDIS...

(In the heart of the time-stream, in the space between seconds, the Fourth Doctor drew on all his remaining strength to act as a connection point for all his selves. The immensity of the strain was obvious; his features were drawn and prematurely aged, his once famous mop of curly brown hair withered and whitened.)

('Mayday, mayday! This is an urgent message for all the Doctors,' he spoke hurriedly into what appeared to be a radio microphone. 'It's vitally important that you listen to me for once. Our whole existence is being threatened by a renegade Time Lord known only as the Rani!')

('She hates me. She even hates children,' the Doctor added in a horrified whisper. 'Two of my earlier selves have already been snared in her vicious trap. The grumpy one and the flautist, you remember them. She wants to put us out of action. Lock us away in a dreary backwater of London's East End. Trapped in a time-loop in perpetuity and her evil is all around us!')

(He looked around him at the chaotic swirl of the time vortex. His time was growing short; he could feel his strength draining away. 'I can hear the hearts beat of a killer. We must be on our guard and we must stop her before she destroys all of our other selves. Oh...')

(A wave of pain wracked his body. He couldn't go on any further for fear that the body of this incarnation would be ripped apart, further weakening his other selves. Now he could only hope that his message would be enough. 'Good luck, my dears,' the Doctor added breathlessly. 'Good luck.')

The Rani whirled around, sensing a change in the ebb and flow of time around her. Standing triumphantly in the middle of the Albert Square Gardens was the figure of the Third Doctor, tall and imposing and seemingly revitalised by his new-found connection with his other selves. 'I've got a few tricks up my sleeve yet, Madam. It's time for you to start losing.'

Beside him now stood Liz Shaw; a formidable scientist in her own right, Liz had worked alongside this very incarnation of the Doctor at the beginning of his exile to Earth and subsequent appointment as Scientific Advisor to the United Nations Intelligence Task-Force, or UNIT as it was more commonly known.

Not that the particular identity of the Doctor's companion mattered to the Rani; whoever they were as a result of the time-trap effects, they could still be used as leverage against the Doctor. Brandishing her weapon, she ordered the Earth female to come to her. The implicit threat of the Rani's command was one that Liz felt she couldn't ignore. Pulling away from the Doctor, she made as if to obey the evil Time Lord's command.

'No Liz, you mustn't!'

'Leave this to me, I'll take my chances.' Before the Doctor or the Rani could react, Liz ran towards the latter, catching her off momentarily off guard. Before the Rani could re-position her gun to cover her, Liz grabbed at the weapon and the two women struggled in front of the Queen Vic.

Although the strange menagerie of creatures that the Rani had loosed upon Albert Square earlier had been out of synch with the timeline of the streets residents, the Rani had not protected herself in such a way. A local teenager named Mandy Salter saw the way in which the Rani had been threatening an old man, and now watched as she struggled with another woman. Although she had no idea about the true scale of the situation unfolding around her, Mandy could recognise the sort of person the Rani was; a bully and a user, the type that would abuse and step on others in a quest for personal power. Without realising it, Mandy Salter was about to play a small but significant role in saving the world.

'What are you doing?' she called out, interjecting herself between the Rani and Liz. 'Leave her alone!' Enraged, the Rani turned her weapon on the teenage girl, ready to destroy her where she stood. Even though she had never seen anything quite like it before, except in science fiction, Mandy could tell a gun when she saw one and quickly turned and fled with Liz Shaw. The Rani would have destroyed them both for their meddling, but was distracted by the sound of car screeching into the square.

The Doctor looked up to see a familiar – and very welcome – sight; Bessie, the heavily modified yellow roadster he used to own during his UNIT days. Behind the wheel was another old friend of his from UNIT, Mike Yates. Mike had been a captain in the military, under he fell into company with a group that wanted to revert the entire Earth back to prehistoric times. Despite the immensity of his fall from grace, Yates later redeemed himself, helping the Third Doctor in his final adventure against the spiders of Metebelis III. And now he was helping the Doctor yet again, in a most unexpected, but extremely timely, manner.

Drawing his own gun to cover him, Yates called out to the Doctor. 'Come on, quickly!' The Rani swung around, fixing her sites on the Doctor as he ran towards Bessie. Yates was quicker on the draw, however, snapping off a shot that jerked the alien weapon out of her hands. Unarmed and unprepared for this new arrival, the Rani flung herself back into the safety of the Queen Vic.

The Doctor swung himself up onto the back of his beloved Bessie. 'I can't thank you enough now get me to the TARDIS as quickly as possible.' Yates nodded and put his foot down, exiting Albert Square as quickly as he entered. As they approached the river, the Doctor spied a helicopter heading for the same position as they were. Getting closer, he could see that it was a UNIT Sea King.

'Another old friend,' Yates explained as he pulled Bessie up a safe distance from where the helicopter was going to land. Instinctively keeping his head down, the Doctor made towards the helicopter, already confident in whom he would find at the controls.

'Brigadier!' Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, the former commander of UNITs UK operations and also one of the Doctor's oldest and dearest friends on Earth. Taking his hand, the Brigadier helped him climb into the helicopter.

'Come on Doctor, not far now!'


	5. Chapter Four: The Red Queen's Race

'I'm finding it difficult to keep up with all of you these days, Doctor,' the Brigadier wryly commented as they stepped out of the helicopter at the Greenwich Observatory. On the ride over from London the Doctor had tried to the best of his ability to explain what was going on. Used to being completely confused by the various goings on with the Doctor, the Brigadier didn't let the details bother him. The Doctor needed his help and he gave it. It was as simple as that. Now if only the Doctor could keep his appearance steady for once, that would be something else...

'Some other time eh, Brigadier? Alas there's no time for pleasantries. ' the Sixth Doctor replied shaking his friends hand. Although Lethbridge-Stewart had never met this particular incarnation of the Doctor before, he had encountered at least five others in their long and storied association and was by now unfazed at meeting another iteration. Even his dress sense didn't raise an eyebrow anymore.

The Brigadier nodded. Considering the Doctor was able to travel freely, if sometimes unreliably, throughout time itself, it seemed that time was almost always of the essence whenever he was concerned. 'We'll speak soon, old chap. To all of you, I hope.' But the Doctor was already on the move again. He needed to find his TARDIS, and to do that he would have to try and instigate another time shift. The Rani had sought to distance him from the TARDIS both geographically and temporally, but he still had access to the time zone in which his travel machine was located, provided he had the strength to take control of the Time-Trap once again. He just hoped that his companion, whoever they may be at the moment, was safe...

* * *

Romana had found herself running from the Rani.

Lost in the unfamiliar location of Albert Square she had taken refuge in a nearby garage, hoping to regain her bearings. Unlike the other companions of the Doctor's, Roman was a Time Lord herself, every bit the equal of the Doctor and the Rani when it came to matters of a temporal nature. However, she was still vulnerable to retaliation by the Rani, especially separated as she was from the Doctor, and so she instinctively ducked into hiding behind a weather beaten old car when she heard the garage door being opened.

'I thought you said you locked it?' Phil Mitchell complained, stepping through the doorway. Following behind him was his brother, Grant. 'I did, someone must have broken in!' The Mitchell brothers were both heavy set young men – if there was an intruder, between the two of them they didn't expect to have too much trouble sorting them out.

'What's going on here?' Grant called out. Romana tried to position herself further back behind the car, but it was no good; the garage was to cramped to offer any real hiding spots.

'Oi, you!' Phil had spotted her. With no point to be gained in continuing to hide, Romana drew herself up to her full height. 'What's your game?'

Not one to be intimidated easily, Romana quickly turned the tables on the two brothers. 'I was looking for the Doctor, if it's really any of your business,' she sniffed, adopting a haughty air of such self-assured confidence in her own right to do anything that she pleased that the two brothers were momentarily caught off their guard.

'Well, you won't find him in here,' Grant explained, giving her the once over. She didn't seem like the usual type you found breaking and entering. A real upper crust sort, this one was. Probably off her meds or something, if she was looking for the doctor. All those high-society types were pill poppers these days. 'He lives at number one Albert Square, over there. I suggest you leave.'

Romana paused at the door to the garage. Could these boorish types really know where the Doctor was? 'Have you seen the Doctor?

'Yeah, Doctor Legg,' Phil replied. 'He's the only doctor round here, love.'

'Doctor who?' Romana snapped, before storming out of the garage.

* * *

'I now have everything I want apart from one Earthling. My menagerie is almost complete!' Despite the minor setback of the Doctor and his companion escaping her, the Rani still had no real reason to doubt in her ultimate success. All she needed was a human being, and they were in no short supply at the moment.

'Prepare to rematerialise at the centre of the Earth time meridian, Greenwich,' she ordered her assistant. 'I will collect the final specimen myself.'

* * *

At exactly the wrong moment Romana returned to the front of the Queen Vic, hoping to find some trace of the Doctor. The Rani couldn't believe the opportunity this represented; to use the Doctor's own travelling companion as the final component in her scheme to destroy him once and for all. With a sinister laugh she reached from the doorway of the Queen Vic, dragging the helpless Romana inside her TARDIS.

Across the street, a surprised Frank Butcher did a double take as he watched the young woman disappear inside the gloomy entrance of the old pub. 'Well I've seen them dragged out of the Vic,' he muttered to himself, 'but never dragged in!'

* * *

In 1973 the Third Doctor bounded across the deck of the Cutty Sark. Through a concentrated effort he had managed to pierce the Time-Trap, bringing himself back to where this nightmarish adventure had begun.

'I should be taking it easy, not bounding around like some megaluthian slime skimmer,' he complained as he dashed down the staircase that had been set up for access to the retired clipper. Fortunately the TARDIS was still where he – or at least his seventh incarnation – had left it, not terribly far away in the shadow of the Cutty Sark. Reaching his wonderful machine, he quickly slipped inside and activated the dematerialisation circuit.

* * *

It proved to be a short trip. Setting the controls of his TARDIS to lock on to the Rani's own travel machine, the two TARDIS's appeared at the same time in the grounds of the Greenwich Observatory in the time zone of 1993. The Chameleon Circuit of the Rani's TARDIS had chosen an ornate stone altar like structure to act as a disguise, blending in with the beautiful classical stone work of the observatory.

Having used the abilities of his own TARDIS to finally impose some lasting stability on his otherwise constantly changing appearance, it was the Seventh Doctor which strode out to face his adversary. But it was not the Rani who emerged from the stone altar, but rather the Doctor's companion, this time in the form of Leela. Leela had been a warrior from a distant Earth colony in the far future whose tribe had reverted to more primitive ways. 'Doctor!' she called, racing to his side.

'I see she let you go.' The Doctor smiled gladly; he knew the sort of twisted, brutal tortures that the Rani could inflict in the name of 'science' and was relieved to see his companion had escaped her clutches seemingly unscathed.

'Not before she cloned me though,' Leela explained; a note of awe evident in her voice. The sheer amount of cloned creatures she had seen; the enormity of the Rani's plan was staggering. 'She's got a menagerie of clones in there.'

The Doctor waved his hands frantically, the gesticulations helping him to frame his thoughts on the Rani's mad scheme. This was where the exact localised focus of the Time-Trap was, this was the reason why the TARDIS had landed at the Greenwich harbour in 1973. 'She's attempting to transfer a massive time tunnel through the Greenwich Meridian!'

Leela was trying hard to remember all that she had seen while she had been captive inside the Rani's TARDIS but it was hard; she had been in a different form then and the memories were already growing distant, like dreams upon waking. 'She has a computer in there... with genetic codes and brain prints of every living creature in the entire cosmos.'

This seemed to make sense to the Doctor, who raised a hand to his mouth in dawning realisation as the final pieces of the Rani's puzzled plan fell into place. 'With it evolution is hers to control...'

He whirled around, struck by inspiration. 'Except... what form where you in when she cloned you? Now think, it's very important!' Such a computer would require very precise calculations; the Rani had kidnapped and cloned his companion because she needed an Earthling brain to complete her computations, but she there was still a chance she had overlooked one very simple fact. Not all the Doctor's companions had been human. There was still the chance, however remote, that she had taken his young friend when she had been of a different species.

Leela hesitated slightly before answering. 'Romana.' Yes, that was definitely who she had been when the Rani captured her and she had retained that form throughout the cloning process.

'The Time Lady,' the Doctor's whole body seemed to light up. That would be perfect. He had already seen a Gallifreyan in the Rani's collection when they had been threatened in Albert Square. 'That means there are two time brains in the Rani's computer!'

Quickly the Doctor hurried them back into the TARDIS. A double up of even a regular brain pattern in the Rani's computer would have caused her computations innumerable setbacks, but a second Time Lord brain... It would overload under the strain!

* * *

The Rani watched triumphantly as, on the monitor screen in her TARDIS control room, the Time-Tunnel throbbed with an unnatural energy.

'Thirty seconds to the computer reaching full power status, Mistress.' Cyrian informed her.

'Excellent.' As far as the Rani was concerned, there was nothing that could possibly stop her now...

As far as the Doctor was concerned, however, there was still a chance to turn the tables on the evil Time Lord. 'Hold this,' he absently ordered as he dropped an old fashioned alarm clock into the hands of his companion, Ace. Just as he had used the TARDIS to stabilise his own temporal incarnation, so too had the Doctor managed to bring the constant changes in Ace's character back under control as well.

The Greenwich Observatory looked like it was playing host to a mad scientist's garage sale, as the Doctor had set up a series of strange devices around the grounds; there were more magnetic tape reels, electrode tubes and more switches and dials than Ace had ever seen outside of a 1950's science fiction movie. Copper wire and thick electrical cables snaked across the ground in all directions, connecting up the hodge-podge of machinery not just to each other but also to the Rani's TARDIS.

'25 seconds,' came the mechanical voice of K-9, the Doctor's equally mechanical dog. K-9 was a powerful computational tool in his own right and was busy counting down the time until the Rani's computer reached full power.

The Doctor hurriedly moved between the pieces of equipment, flicking switches and turning dials. 'I'm trying to overload the Rani's computer, enhance the power of the time tunnel to pull her TARDIS in and not me.'

Ace followed along behind him. 'I assume it's not as easy as it sounds?'

'Twenty seconds...'

Seeming to run out of machines to manipulate, the Doctor put his hands to his temples. 'I must try and free my other incarnations.' A look of intense concentration crossed his face as he reached out with his mind, trying once again to breach the barriers of time and make contact with the other aspects of himself that were caught up in the Rani's time-trap.

'Join me...'

('We must pull free,' the Third Doctor answered.)

('We must succeed,' replied the Fifth Doctor.)

('Precisely,' the Sixth Doctor chimed in.)

('Good luck,' whispered the Fourth Doctor.)

'Five seconds,' the voice of K-9 interrupted. The Seventh Doctor swung around, pointing a finger at the mechanical dog. 'K-9, activate the convertor!' he ordered, whirling around once again to face a massive computer terminal. As K-9 counted down the last few seconds, the Doctor flipped one final switch.

'Here goes...'

Electricity arched along the spider web of wires. The Rani's TARDIS sparked and exploded as the power looped through it, feeding back on itself in a disastrous circuit. Inside her control room the Rani could only scream in impotent rage as her time machine was forced into an uncontrolled flight, propelled into the open mouth of the Time-Tunnel. As it disappeared inside the swirling chaos, the disembodied aspects of the First and Second Doctors were in turn freed from the tunnel, drawn back by the combined mental powers of their other selves.

The Rani had been defeated.

* * *

'Hoisted by her own peTARDIS,' the Doctor mercilessly quipped as he and Ace gathered up the various pieces of equipment they had used to help defeat the Rani.

Ace ignored the Doctor's agonising joke. 'What did you do to her?'

'Well, there were two time brains in her computer,' he explained, loading another circuit board on top of the already dangerously overloaded pile Ace was carrying. 'And I used this to propel her into the trap set for me.'

Which of course didn't explain anything, but then again, that was something to which Ace had become accustomed. When you could travel through time and space with an alien Time Lord who could change his appearance, things rarely made much sense. And really, it wouldn't be half as much fun if they did.

'So now your other selves are all free?'

'Certainly,' the Doctor chuckled as he opened the TARDIS door for her. 'I... I mean 'we'... are difficult to get rid of.'


End file.
